"She got her claws into [Patraeus]"

"You're a 60 year-old man and an attractive woman almost half your age makes herself available to you — that would be a test for anyone. The timing of the rumors of the administration throwing him under the bus after the election is suspect, but in the end I believe she got her claws — so to speak — in him. He had enough honor to know that a cover-up is much worse than a public admission. As a result, I think he can recover and continue to be a player on the national stage, but she's toast. Her reputation is unrecoverable, in my opinion."

64. That is not true about the first move, in my experience.

There have been quite a few women who have hit on my husband knowing full well he was married, completely unsolicited by him. He always tells me about it, because he is absolutely tickled by it and wants me to know how AWESOME and HOT he is, LOL. Edit to add: I think a lot of men do not want to deal with enraged husbands, just a guess.

8. They are BOTH to blame.

72. not equally, his job makes it very unequal

she is a writer and he is CIA.

who do you think has more at stake here? his weakness could put many in danger. I'm sure there is an unspoken or tiny font clause in his contract of don't fuck around cuz you don't know who you are fucking around with and what they are after.

83. I think she's just as much

to blame. They're both weak assed jerk off morons. They both ruined their families. They both had the opportunity to say NO. Neither of them did. She was his biographer, which would kind of indicate to me that she had been background checked and investigated to the hilt by the FBI.
He had more to lose career wise. He's pretty much finished personally and professionally. It remains to be seen if she can recover professionally and personally.

24. Being pretty familiar with the military lifestyle, I would suspect

that this gal was not Petraeus' first cheat. Might be his last, but probably wasn't his first. He would have gotten away with it in the military (what goes TDY stays TDY), but didn't realize the CIA was a different ballgame.

17. So? That does happen to business travelers.

And of both sexes. An honorable man simply says, "Sorry. I don't cheat on my wife." And there's an end to that. It is the dishonorable man who seeks out or accepts invitations to cheat. Always. There is no honor in breaking one's marriage vows. None at all.

33. Give me an example of an affair that is honorable, then.

I'll wait. Yes, the blame is generally evenly divided. All either party has to do is to refuse to cheat and there is no affair. Assuming a consensual act of sex, then both parties have agreed to cheat, an both are at fault. Even if one is unmarried, if the other is married and that's known, then both parties are at fault.

Yes, temptation happens. It certainly has in my life. However, what I do is my responsibility. I have to own it.

After about 10 years of marriage, there was a very powerful attraction between a woman who was part of a musical group I was in and myself. We both recognized it, and flirted with each other a bunch. She was single and I was married. After that attraction was clear and dangerous, we talked about it. I said, "I can't. I won't cheat on my wife." She said, "Good, because I don't have sex with married men." We became friends, instead, but it would only have taken a moment for it to have gone the other way. It would have been easy for us to have jumped each others' bones. We did not. That was harder.

41. Moral inflexibility? You seem rather invested in making this the woman's fault.

I find that interesting. I took your OP to be an objective posting of what somebody else is saying, but you seem to be defending that point of view in this thread.

They are both at fault. The person in the position of power is somewhat more at fault. That means that Bill Clinton was more at fault than Monical Lewinsky. Petraeus is more at fault than his biographer. Etc.

38. Hubby was propositioned when I was standing right next to him at the airport going to a conference.

Seems the lady had her eye on him on the plane and turned out she was heading to the same conference. She tried to get him to meet her for drinks, but she withdrew the invite when he said "My wife and I would love to." Then she had something else to do and made sure she sat way ahead of us in the bus taking us to the hotel.

37. " Your attempt to blame the woman exclusively is bogus."

47. When someone posts an article here without comment,

I assume that the poster agrees with the article. When that poster later defends the premise, I'm pretty sure of it. When the poster attacks someone who says that the article is wrong by referring to that person as Freeper-like, then I know I'm right.

34. Oh, of course they poor guy never had chance.

43. Well, speaking from experience, it can be quite hard to resist

Culturally speaking. infidelity is much harsher on women than men,
and I think there's a fair amount of biological evidence to explain why,
it's programmed into male DNA to seek many partners,
and programmed into female DNA to enforce a single long-term partner.

I can't remember the book now
but a few years ago there was a cultural/scientific study
about.. ah, here it is.

53. So? Yes, it's hard. It's a test of character. All too many men fail

that test all too easily. Everyone gets tempted in one way or another. Those with character and principles don't act on that temptation. Those who do act on such temptations display the weakness of their character, even if only temporarily. Either a person lives according to his or her word or does not.

79. +100

42. Certain types of people just LOVE pushing the idea that the poor cheater is the victim

of the manipulative, beguiling, younger temptress/temptor.

Pardon my bluntness, but to anyone who preaches/believes that shit: You're fooling no one but yourselves.

Whether you were betrayed, and are trying to stay in denial, and keep yourself from seeing that yes, your partner did FREELY make the CHOICE to betray you; or you are the betrayer, trying to convince yourself that you really just 'couldn't help yourself'... sorry, but you're wrong. Deal with it.

59. You sure make the case for men being the weaker sex...

At least speaking for yourself. You just don't seem to have any control over your own bad behavior, do you? You make it seem as if you feel you men are nothing but brainless sex machines that have absolutely no willpower.

"I'd argue that the woman gets blamed because it's in our nature to blame her."??? Wow, I feel sorry for any women in your life.

48. If, as the author here implies, a man can't be expected to act rationally ...

... when faced with an available woman half his age, why would you ever trust a man with an important job? Surely we should give all those jobs to women, since men are incapable of being responsible for their own actions.

Sorry, this author's argument is a total failure. There are plenty of men who are able to pass this "test" - Patraeus just isn't one of them.

55. Unfortunately, in relationships like this one, the woman is the person that suffers.

It is safe to say that the journalist is finished as a journalist. But she can recover and move int other fields, like writing. Her predicament is unfortunate, but it is one that women that wants power and influence must consider before hooking up with a married powerful man. One of the bad issues is that powerful women can have this type of affair and the man involved will be called a stud.

63. "shameless self-promoting prom queen"?

Sounds very one-sided and anti-female. I won't moralize and criticize them for having sex. If they want to break their marriage vows that's up to them. Their behavior however showed a serious lack of good judgement; a third party who discovered the affair could have engaged in blackmail, putting the lives of agents and the very nation at risk. Both should have known better and probably Petraeus more than her, as his was the position with access to sensitive information.

91. Business Insider is a barely credible site that probably pays next to nothing. Blhhhh

74. Powerful men cheating on their wives, this is NEWS?

This shit has been going on since the dawn of civilization. A lot of the people who go into politics and the military are exactly the kind of impulsive extroverted "high-dopamine" personalities that do stupid shit like adultery. Big Dog is a classic example of the type, as is John Edwards. Ditto with FDR and JFK.

I don't have much sympathy for him, the "evil tempress" narrative is BS.

88. Well, in this case, maybe he leaked secrets.

85. Sometimes it's just one of those things

Oh, sure, you can dump on Petraeus and Broadwell. And there may even be dump opportunities on their respective spouses. We don't know what goes on behind closed doors.

The odds are, however, that no one in this equation is evil. Sometimes these things happen, and it's unfortunate for the four involved here that it's being revealed so publicly. But, well, that happens as well sometimes.

How's this for a change? Let's let the story, as a story, drop from the front pages and allow these people to figure out how they would like to move on with their lives. Because, really, it's none of our business.

93. What a load of crap! They both are shown to

have a lack of character and zero integrity. Their ego's mean more to them than honour. His vows appear to have little import to him and she has no respect for the wife's marriage. They are both pieces of shit, neither more than the other. Both are equally culpable.